French brace for big 48 hours
Paris – Football fever has gripped the French capital and sales of the national team’s soccer shirts are surging ahead of France’s World Cup final against Croatia tomorrow.
Fans thronged stores on the Avenue des Champs-Elysees and the capital’s Republique area to buy replica shirts bearing the names of the team’s stars, such as teenage sensation Kylian Mbappe and N’Golo Kante.
“We’ve had loads of orders for shirts and we’ve practically sold them all,” said a manager at the NSH Football store in Paris. “There have been a lot of orders for Mbappe and Kante shirts.”
Others found novel ways to mark the World Cup. Parisian baker Didier Lavry, who runs the Petit Mitron boulangerie, made a special “tricolore” cake before France’s showdown.
The dark-blue shirts of Les Bleus could be seen in the city’s bars and cafes as Paris prepared for a bumper weekend with the Bastille Day holiday today followed by the Word Cup final tomorrow.
In France this weekend, they will be hoping for a double celebration: firstly their national day today and then the lifting of the Fifa World Cup trophy in Moscow tomorrow afternoon. But the youthful, stylish, athletic French team – many of whose players have their roots in Africa – will not have it all their way. You can bet on that. Their opponents, Croatia, have always been regarded as an outside chance in the tournament and in many of their matches, have been looked on as underdogs.
The men from the Balkans demonstrated against England that not only do they have the physical fitness, they also have tenacity and determination, mixed with a fair dose of raw talent.
Yet Les Bleus remain favourites. They have hardly been tested at this World Cup and the team has an infectious eagerness which sets them apart from all of their rivals.
This tournament, like many before it, has provided sublime entertainment, surprise, drama and humour in equal measure. Occasional niggles and the dramatic diving aside, it is also a reminder that football is still the beautiful game.
And when it comes to nations competing, we’ll take a football field over a battlefield any day.